Zippered Design

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We take the zipper for granted; it has become one of the most commonly used inventions on Earth. We build all Dormio Organic mattresses with zippered covers. Without it we would just be another mattress. The zipper is 100 years old, and billions of people rely on it every day for various reason. You’ll find zippers on everything from jackets, pants, boots, backpacks, tents and luggage, to purses, pencil cases and now on your Dormio mattress.

The concept of a zipper got its start when an American, Elias Howe, earned a patent in 1851 for his Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure. His idea was ahead of its time, but Howe was so busy with his other inventions (including the sewing machine, which would later make zippers much easier to install) that he never got around to commercializing the radical new type of sliding fastener. It wasn’t until many years later that Whitcomb Judson came up with something called the Clasp Locker, and later the Judson C-Curity Fastener. Unfortunately, his invention could be tricky to close, and sometimes would open by itself. As a result it wasn’t very popular with the general public. The idea might have disappeared all together and left us all living in a button-down world until a Swedish electrical engineer named Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback, who had immigrated to the United States took Whitcomb’s design back to the drawing board and came up with the system of tiny interlocking teeth now known as the zipper.

In 1913, the zipper, then called the “separable fastener” was patented. The Lightning Fastener Co. in St. Catharines, Ontario, of which Sundback was president, started manufacturing the new fastener, but it took a few more decades to really grab the world’s attention.

Here are some zipper facts:

The zipper was originally used in footwear and bags for holding tobacco.

One of the first big customers was the U.S. military, which used zippers in gear and uniforms issued to World War One troops. Zippers made it much easier to put on your pants if one was in a hurry.

The children’s clothing and adult fashion industries didn’t start using zippers in great numbers until the 1930s.

Zippers really took off in 1937, when they caught the attention of a number of French fashion designers.

In 1954, Levi’s introduced a special zippered version of its overalls called the 501Z, replacing the button-fly. The company eventually brought in zippers across its line of jeans, but not until the 1970s.

Once the airtight zipper was perfected in the 1950s, it found its way to the depths of the ocean on diving gear, into orbit and eventually to the moon.

NASA helped develop airtight zippers for fighter-pilot pressure suits and later adapted them for space suits, including the ones used for the Apollo 11 moon landing (Neil Armstrong’s zippers)

According to Fort Lauderdale’s Sun Sentinel newspaper, a local Sheraton hotel had a zipper more than 1.8 kilometres long built in 1988 as a promotional gimmick. The zipper was draped from a hot air balloon and then taken and wrapped around the hotel to promote its nightclub, called Zippers.

And finally Dormio Organic mattresses…..

If for whatever reason we need to change the feel and/ or support of your new mattress, it’s as simple as unzipping the cover and making the necessary changes. Even though we do our best to put together the best possible mattress for you, the only way to truly know if it’s 100% right is to sleep on it. So if your new mattress needs to be just a bit softer or just a bit firmer, no problem. We can make these minor adjustments right in your home.

Dormio would like to thank Elias Howe, Whitcomb Judson and Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback for making it possible to build our zippered mattresses.

If your new mattress doesn’t feel right, we’ll make it right………every time.